Ockham, for example, treated the former as philosophically incom - prehensible and religiously believable only on the basis of a special mode of knowing; the great Arab thinkers in Spain, especially the Averroists, raised doubts about personal immortality which were not without influence in the Christian West.

With his associated doc - trines of the total perversion of man and the incom - prehensible majesty of God, he banned, and had to ban, all ideas of a possible accommodation of God's com - mands to the needs of man: man was simply too low and mean, too near to zero in value and importance to deserve consideration, while God was too high up and too far away to concede it.

For twenty minutes or more he continued his researches, measuring with the most exact care the distance between marks which were entirely invisible to me, and occasionally applying his tape to the walls in an equally incom - prehensible manner.